During Summer Games Fest, I was given the opportunity to sit down with ViewFinder from Sad Owl Studios. It is a delightfully low-stress puzzling game about shifting perspectives in a way to allow you to traverse the world.
The story in ViewFinder seems to not be the main focus of Viewfinder, as during my short time with it, I did not get any inclination toward the overarching narrative if there even is one. According to the developer, there is a story behind the mysteries of the world and why such a place exists. I will be interested to see how this shakes out and how it will exude an overarching narrative to tie everything together.
However, What was presented was a very laid-back puzzling experience akin to The Witness from 2016. When I started, there was a polaroid on a canvas and an unfathomably large gap between buildings. The main gameplay mechanic of Viewfinder is finding ways to manipulate the surrounding area to access new areas or bring items back from these otherworldly areas brought to reality through photographs.
“Viewfinder is setting itself up to join the higher echelon of puzzlers because what shouldn’t really work with mixing realities does, thanks to the developers’ commitment to not needing to line things up perfectly.”
It is incredibly difficult to explain the gameplay of Viewfinder fully. There are a lot of forced perspective photographs and reality mixing to create bridges and portals to new areas. Very quickly during the demo, we shift away from photos to professional paintings of scenery all the way to a children’s drawing of a house. It all just works.
That’s really the magic selling point of Viewfinder. I have been known to enjoy the puzzle game genre, with Curse of the Golden Idol and Return of the Obra Dinn being top-tier puzzlers. Viewfinder is setting itself up to join the higher echelon of puzzlers because what shouldn’t really work with mixing realities does, thanks to the developers’ commitment to not needing to line things up perfectly.
Over the course of my demo, the Developer was ecstatic to see how I was solving the puzzles and exclaimed that everyone seemed to solve them in different ways and was very excited to see what the speedrunning community would do to Viewfinder once it was out—leaning into the fact that you don’t have to line everything up perfectly to make puzzles work.
Just line them up in a way that you can make it work. This did lead to some awkward setups of trying to jump to areas I felt like I should not have been able to get to and having to pick up and rotate pictures ever so slightly to make some weird placement work out in my favour.
My time with Viewfinder was very short, and while I wish I had more time with it, I think it was just long enough to build up all these questions of how they plan on implementing a story of why the reality shift and perspective-bending are possible in this world they have created. If they can pull that monumental task off, then Viewfinder might just be one of the best games this year. Even if they don’t, there is an incredibly chilled-out experience to have in Viewfinder.
“If they can pull that monumental task off, then Viewfinder might just be one of the best games this year.”
There are no real stakes. You can take these puzzles at your own pace, or sometimes if you are anything like me, just gawk at how stunningly beautiful some of these vistas are, especially when you are looking back at your work and have these black and white photos mixed in with the hand-painted sunsets then adding on top of that some children’s art. It is amazing how all these different art styles clash horribly but, in a weird way, also fit in so perfectly together.
Overall, Viewfinder was an interesting experience. I love a great puzzler, and this year we have gotten some substantial entries in that genre, and Viewfinder seems like it will be added to that list. But there were a few things I am skeptical of.
How the overall discovery of the story will play out, and how the looseness of the connectivity of the photos will play out through the entire game. I only found myself frustrated in one section during the demo because of how freely I was able to place the pictures, so multiply that by a few hours, and it does worry me a little bit.
